by Dave Isay
He had volunteered to go to Iraq the second time—his fourth mission—and it was there that he was hit by an IED. We just didn’t expect it. He had had some close calls while he was over there, but we just assumed that he would make it through again and he was going to come home soon. There was just no doubt in our minds. . . .
Angie lived about an hour away, and there were two teams coming to both homes at the same time to tell us. When we were told, I had my hands over my ears and I fell to the ground screaming, “No!” And his father just tried to hold it together and said, “Was there anybody else hurt?” and “Where’s my son now?”
We drove over to Angie’s and all their kids were playing outside. Angie and I started hugging and crying, and my husband goes, “You know, we don’t need to cry, because Tony did something very brave and we’re proud of him.” And then he said, “And that was my son. . . .” And he just couldn’t talk—he started to cry. I had never seen my husband cry before . . . and I saw how much his son meant to him.
My son lived. In his thirty-one years, he lived. Tony wanted to be in the military. He knew the dangers. He chose it. When I’m with my grandchildren, I’ll gather them around and I’ll talk to them about their father, and they’re very excited to listen. They want to know who their dad was. I want them to remember him with a smile. He was a character. But he was also brave, and I want them to be brave, too—to be courageous and to stand for what they think is right. People look back and remember you for the things you did for others, for the courage to live your life the way you thought you should, and for showing people that you love them. Life is more than just about you—and I think my son showed that through his life and through his death.
Recorded in Arlington, Virginia, on July 11, 2009.
ENDURING LOVE
KRISTI HAGER, 59 tells her friend, CHERIE NEWMAN, 52 about her mom, Norine Hager.
Kristi Hager: I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot. In a couple of days, I’m going to be giving her eulogy, and I have an awful lot of stories to tell that I won’t be able to tell in ten minutes. She was spunky. She liked to get us out of the house in the summertime. She would say things like “Get out and shake the stink off!” She couldn’t stand us sitting around. Somebody who wrote me a condolence note said, “Your mom was rock solid,” and that’s a quality that really rings true to me. Because she was from the Midwest, she had a real solid, no-nonsense attitude towards life. I’m going to miss that.
I remember moments when my mother and I shared completely blissful laughing fits. The kind where something gets you going, and you start laughing—and you know you’re laughing just because you’re laughing. Then you don’t know why you’re laughing, so you’re laughing at the fact that you don’t know why you’re laughing. . . .
One of the things that triggered one of those fits was when I was helping her study for her lifesaving exam so she could be a lifeguard at our swimming pond. I was about nine years old. I would read her the questions, and she had the answers memorized. She had it down. So I asked her the question: “What do you do when you’re swimming in a pond and the weeds below start to pull you under?” And she just answered, “Extricate yourself with slow, undulating motions.” The words came out of her mouth and we both looked at each other and burst into this laughing fit—sides aching! I didn’t even know what it meant; I just knew that it was the funniest thing I had ever heard. She was laughing so hard until we did-n’t even know why we were laughing anymore.
I got into that state with my mother probably two or three times in my life, and that was when we weren’t mother and daughter anymore. Those roles just kind of fell by the wayside, and at those moments we were just two people laughing. It’s a transcendent moment, and I treasure it. I kind of forgot about those words for years and years and years, but that moment of laughter I never forgot.
I feel a certain longing. It’s a very animal type of longing. My enduring image is her sitting with the other mothers in the neighborhood while she watched us swimming in the pond. I just have this image of her sitting with her knees in front of her and her arms resting on her knees and her back was so tan. Right now I just think of that warm back, and I just want to put my cheek next to it. It’s just visceral. Her presence there on the shore was so reassuring.
Recorded in Missoula, Montana, on August 4, 2005.
EILEEN COHEN, 56 talks to her husband, JAMIE ROY, 52 about her mother, Helen Cohen.
Eileen Cohen: My mom worked three jobs, so all the household tasks happened on the weekend. My brothers and I would be sleeping, and she would be in the supermarket—early, early, early. She’d drag all the groceries up the steps. We were kinda rousing out of the bed, and we would try to help her. But being a traditional Jewish mother, she wasn’t interested. She would say, “The horse is here”—she being the horse. “The horse can work from morning till night. My big lump”—that was Jeffrey—“my little lump”—that was Mark—“and my middle lump”—that was me. “Go back to bed, my three little lumps, because the horse is here!” I guess it was typical Jewish guilt. And that went on for years.
It was impossible not to fall in love with her. It was impossible . Children fell in love with her; some kids would go over to her and say, “Could you take me home and be my grandma?” They just absolutely loved her.
Jamie Roy: She reminds me a lot of you—and I fell in love with you. The story that’s always amazed me is the time you were in the Caribbean and you got dragged out to sea.
Eileen: I had a job with a pacemaker company, and one of the sales reps asked me if I wanted to go on vacation. He said, “We’re gonna get a sailboat, a big one, and we’re gonna sail in the Caribbean.” And I said, “Count me in! Absolutely.” But the problem was, I didn’t know how to swim.
About a week before the vacation, I said to a lifeguard, “I’m going on vacation in the Caribbean. I don’t know how to swim—can you teach me?” He looked at me and said, “There’s no way I can do this in a week—how about if I just teach you how to tread water?” I said, “Fine, teach me how to do that.” So he did.
We were on this great boat, sailing, and I decided to jump in the water. I felt very confident because I had flippers on and it was salt water, so I was very buoyant. I thought I would go exploring. So I did—and I was sucked out into the ocean. I yelled, but there was huge wind, and they couldn’t hear me. I yelled, “Help me! Help me! Help me!” I was in the ocean by myself, and the boat where I had originally jumped in was a distant, distant vision.
I think it was the one time in my life that I didn’t analyze or think. I was just on automatic pilot. And my mother was with me the entire time. I heard her from the moment I realized that I couldn’t get back. Every time I started panicking, I heard her say to me, “You’re my special girl. Don’t worry, you can do this. You’ve done things that you thought were hard before. Remember when you didn’t know how to skip, and I taught you how to skip? You were so upset. Hang in there!”
One of my vacationmates called my mother and father to say that I’m missing at sea, presumed dead, because the harbormaster said, “If she doesn’t know how to swim, it’s impossible she could last out there.” So my father answered, and he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about—you took her away alive; you better bring her back exactly like that! I’m not interested in anything else that you have to say.”
When I was in the ocean, I saw in the distance a little piece of land. I’ve seen people swim; I knew you had to use your arms and kick your legs. So I kind of did that until I was finally able to get to that piece of land. It was deserted, but the next day, I had a plan: to sit on one of the rocks that jutted out into the ocean, take the ribbon out of my hair, put it on a stick, and sit and wait there till a boat came by, and try to get their attention. Which is exactly what happened.
When I was brought back to my friends, I called my mom and my dad from the harbor to tell them that I was okay, and my mother said, “Listen, I realize you’re twenty-eight yea
rs old, but this vacation’s over as far as I’m concerned. I’m sending your brother down to get you.” She sent Mark down, and when I met him at the airport, he said, “Mom stayed up the whole night. She was talking to you. She paced back and forth saying, ‘You’re my special girl.You can do this.You’re strong.’” Exactly what I heard while treading water.
I feel it was really an honor and a privilege to be her child, I really do. In her eyes, there were only three children in the entire world: there were the three of us, and then everyone else was underneath. And it wasn’t that she didn’t really love everybody else, because she’d stop and look at every child and talk to every mother. But her children—no one could compare.
She made you feel loved, adored, cherished, and safe.
Recorded in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 6, 2008.
ROBERT MADDEN, 44 talks to his friend, TOM KURTHY, 44 about his mother, Betty Jane Madden.
Robert Madden: I grew up in south central Mississippi. My mom and dad were both country people, and the gifts that they gave me are astounding to me today. I grew up in a country environment: I laugh about not wearing shoes until I went to school—it was pretty true. We would go visit my grandmother and drive a mile down a country road, through the cattle guard, and down behind cornfields to get to her house. I thought everyone grew up like we did.
I woke up every morning of my life, from the time I started school until I finished high school, to my mother saying, “Robert Lynn, Robert Lynn, wake up, honey! Breakfast is on the table!” She’d get up every morning, she’d make breakfast, and when I’d come home from school in the afternoon, there was always something fresh baked. Then I’d do my homework, and she’d send us out to play. Then at six or six-thirty, dinner was on the table, from scratch. I took all that for granted growing up. I went to pick up a friend to take him to school one morning—his mother was still in bed, and there were vodka bottles all over his dining room table, and she was screaming, “Get your own breakfast!” And I was like, “Is this normal?” And he’s like, “Oh yeah, totally normal for me.”
My mom was called the Bicycle Lady when I was a kid because she rode eighteen miles on her bike every day. It didn’t matter if it was raining or whatever, she would put on her poncho, and she’d take off on her bike. I just loved being with her. She was an amazing woman. Stubborn. I got a double dose of that.
My mother was Catholic and my father was Southern Baptist, and in the 1950s it was unheard of that they would get married. My dad was a southern gentleman to his core, a country southern gentleman. And he loved his kids and his family more than anything—but he loved my mother most. That’s one of the things that for me is so beautiful still—the love that they shared. He loved Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, and I can still see him and my mom dancing in the living room when they didn’t think anybody was watching. My mom passed away from cancer in October of 2006, and six months later my father died of a broken heart—he even told his doctor that’s what was wrong with him. The power of their love was amazing. They were a sassy, spicy, beautiful, exciting, vibrant couple. Their life together was whole and beautiful.
I’d come out to my parents when I was ten: I told them that I was going to marry a man when I grew up. But that was a kind of childhood question—I was constantly asking questions of the nature of things, and Mother would say, “Ask the priest, honey—I don’t know. I don’t know who God’s mother is. I don’t know where the edge of the universe is. . . . I don’t know.”
My mother had always told me, “We can handle anything as a family as long as you tell us first. I don’t want to hear about it through the grapevine.” So when I decided to start living openly gay, I told them. My father told me, “I’ve known since you were a little boy. It doesn’t matter to me if you spend your life with a man or with a woman, as long as you make it something you can hold your head up about.” I was astounded. It was just such open, beautiful acceptance. Every year after that he would just tell me how proud he was of me and the way that I lived my life.
My mother took some time, because she thought it was her fault—she felt guilty about it. My grandmother’s passing is what really stimulated her to call me, because my grandma had said, “You’re missing out on a beautiful relationship with Robert Lynn because you can’t accept this about him. He’s Robert Lynn. He’s still the same person you raised and that we all grew up with.” My grandmother loved me very much, and she and my mom and I were sort of this triangle of strength in the family. So my mother came around.
I remember once I went home to visit my mom and dad. My mom and I used to have these really incredible conversations after everyone else went to bed. This particular night she asked me if I would stay up with her, and then she just started asking me all these questions: “What was sex like between two men?” All that kind of stuff. She said, “If you’re embarrassed then you don’t need to answer.” And I said, “I’m not embarrassed. I’m just shocked you would ask me.” And she was like, “I want to know. I’ve been out of your life too long, and I want to know.” So I explained to her, and she sat there with a straight face. Afterwards she just went, “Hmm, curious.”
The last ten years, I made a point to spend as much time with her as I could. A lot of times I would go when I knew none of my siblings would be there, so I could be alone with my parents. I wouldn’t trade those times for anything in the world. I could go there and just get all that sustenance and all that joy and love and acceptance.
When my mother was passing, she put her hand on my face and she said, “You are so precious. I love you.” I said, “I love you too, Mom.” And she goes, “No, I mean unconditionally .” It was the greatest gift . . . it was just the greatest gift she could have given me.
I lost both my parents this past year, six months apart. I know I’ll get through it because you’re with me, but some days I just feel like I can’t breathe, you know? But I do feel them all around me.
When my father was passing he used to say that he could see my mother in the room, that she was there. “Don’t you see her?” he’d say. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
Recorded in Santa Monica, California, on November 9, 2007.
TOM KURTHY ( left) AND ROBERT MADDEN (right)
HILORY BOUCHER, 61 talks to her son, DAVE MILLS, 42
Hilory Boucher: Skip and I were classmates at Boston University. He was cute, and everybody liked him. We just sort of got together and double-dated with this girl in my dorm and a friend of his. His friend had a car, so we sat in the backseat, and after we’d go bowling and get ice cream, we’d park the car and neck.
We went to babysit for his sister’s child in their apartment. We planned this whole thing—this was going to be it. I don’t think he had any more experience than I did. It was not very romantic, and we were both embarrassed. Finally, the deed was accomplished, and we talked about, “Oh, could I get pregnant?” In your mind, you just think, No, not me. God’s going to take care of me—I’m going to get away with this.
We had broken for summer vacation, and I went home with my family in Connecticut. I told my mother, “I didn’t get my friend.” She said, “Well you certainly couldn’t be pregnant, could you?” I said, “No, no! Not me, no!” Totally in denial, until finally she decided I should see the doctor. Our family doctor had delivered my brothers and sisters, had set broken bones, pierced my ears for heaven sakes—everything—so this is the man who examined me, the first time I’d ever been examined that way, and he said to me, “You’re pregnant.Would you like me to tell your mother, or do you want to tell your mother?” I said to him, “I can’t tell my mother.” Fortunately, he did. My mother was holding back tears, just mortified. She said nothing to me until we were in the car, and then she said, “I’m going to have to let your father know this.” So that was the day of reckoning.
My father was a man who expected a certain respect from us, I think even more than love. We were raised Roman Catholic. We attended Mass every Sunday and went to religious
instruction. In high school I was never one of the kids who went out drinking—I just always wanted to be good. Well, now I’d done something that was totally out of the realm of what was expected of me.
My mother and father did not want their friends to know I was pregnant, and I’ve only found out recently how few of them did know. One of my mother’s best friends had no idea. I think what they really find incredible is that my mother didn’t confide in them. I think it was just a tremendous disappointment to my parents, and they didn’t want to tell people that I’d messed up or maybe that they’d messed up.
My parents had met Skip, and they liked him. I thought, Well, I’m going to have to get married. It didn’t happen. His parents did not know about our relationship, and they would not have liked him going out with a girl who wasn’t Jewish. So his brother-in-law got me a place in the Florence Crittenton Home for unwed mothers in a suburb of Boston.
It was a pleasant place to be. We ate together in a dining room; we all took turns at different tasks in the kitchen and in cleaning. It was like an initiation—you’d meet other people in the same situation as you, get to know them, and find out how many people are just like you. We knitted baby clothes and read baby magazines. I made a bunny, a pink bunny, which—
Dave Mills: I still have to this day.
Hilory: And you didn’t know until recently that I had made it for you—the fact that you kept it all this time without that knowledge!
I went into labor the day before or the day after you were due. I remember one girl who delivered about the same time I did—she did not want to see her baby. She said, “I’m glad it’s out of me! I want to be away from here and go on with my life!” She was angry with herself, she was angry with everybody, and she was angry with the baby. In my case, I said, “I want to feed my baby.” So they would bring you in during the day. At night, they said, “You’re going to need your sleep,” but during the day, every two hours, they’d bring you to me. And I savored it. I was there for a couple of weeks—they used to keep you in the hospital for a while.
